Friday, February 8, 2008

This is Awkward. Umm ... Your Roots are Showing.

Last Sunday, The Green Girlfriend and I headed down to Potomac Overlook Regional Park for a pre-Super Bowl hike. And yes, as a Patriots fan, the hike was definitely the highlight of the day. We got there early, which turned out to be a good idea -- while the air was warming up, the still-muddy trails were frozen, so no worries about slipping.

Donaldson Run was obviously still hurting from the record-breaking rain two days prior. New channels were carved down some hillsides and several trees along Donaldson Run, already in precarious positions, looked to be ready to tumble into the stream. The huge tree to the right is barely holding on at this point, leaning up against a smaller tree with more secure roots.

It's a problem that has already cost the county more than a million dollars to address upstream -- intense flows triggered by more runoff all the new pavement in nearby neighborhoods. Communities can help lower the damage by using permeable pavement, but here in America we tend to do things the cheapest possible way for that year's budget, so it's been slow to catch on.